The Lawfare Podcast

From February 22, 2024: As a new report on the intimidation of state and local officeholders from the Brennan Center for Justice points out, “The January 6 insurrection at the Capitol seemed to mark a new peak in extremist intimidation targeting public officials. But it was hardly the only act of political violence to break the period of relative stability that followed the assassinations of the 1960s.” Citing the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, last year’s hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, and many other cases, the report paints a troubling picture of today’s climate of political violence in America. To talk through the report and its implications, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic and Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien sat down with Maya Kornberg, a Research Fellow at the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program and one of the report’s authors. They discussed how Maya and her team surveyed so many state and local officials across a number of jurisdictions, the pervasive risks and threats those officeholders face, and how these threats are distorting U.S. democracy as a whole.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

From August 27, 2019: On August 5, the Indian government announced that it was revoking “special status” for the states of Jammu and Kashmir, enshrined in Article 370 of its constitution. Since then, the government has instituted a lockdown in the Kashmir valley, hundreds of people have been detained, there have been mass protests, and tens of thousands of Indian troops have been deployed to the region. Professor Christine Fair of Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program sat down with Benjamin Wittes to discuss Article 370, its history, and the current state-of-play in the region.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

Ben Brooks, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center and former head of public policy for Stability AI, joins Kevin Frazier, AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Contributing Editor at Lawfare, to discuss a sudden and significant shift toward open-sourcing leading AI models and the ramifications of that pivot for AI governance at home and abroad. Ben and Kevin specifically review OpenAI’s announced plans to release a new open-weights model.Coverage of OpenAI announcement: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/31/openai-plans-to-release-a-new-open-language-model-in-the-coming-months/To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

In recent years, political scientists have given a great deal of attention to “democratic backsliding”—the slow erosion of democracy by aspiring authoritarians. The events of the last several months in the United States—with attacks from the Trump administration on the press, higher education, and any center of power outside the White House—make this research all the more relevant. But the question of how leaders chip away at democracy is only part of the picture. There’s also the question of what things look like from the other side: how can opposition movements resist democratic backsliding, and what techniques are most effective in doing so? Laura Gamboa, an assistant professor of democracy and global affairs at the University of Notre Dame, studies exactly this. Her book, “Resisting Backsliding,” examines case studies from Colombia, Venezuela, and elsewhere to gauge what opposition strategies have the best shot at pushing back against authoritarianism. She sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic to discuss her research and what it might tell us about the state of democracy in America today. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

In her recent Lawfare article, Alexis Loeb—a former deputy chief of the Jan. 6 Capitol Siege Section at the U.S. Department of Justice and a current partner at Farella, Braun, and Martel—discussed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s memo dismantling the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. On today’s episode, Loeb joined Lawfare Associate Editor Olivia Manes to talk about the work that the Kleptocracy Team conducted, why it mattered for national security, and whether the Justice Department’s actions are part of a broader administrative trend towards non-enforcement of corruption.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act is the first major U.S. federal law to squarely target non‑consensual intimate imagery (NCII) and to include a component requiring tech companies to act. Long handled via a patchwork of state laws, it criminalizes NCII at the federal level—both authentic images and AI-generated digital forgeries—and requires that platforms remove reported NCII within 48 hours of notification by a victim or victim's representative. TAKE IT DOWN passed with wide bipartisan support—unanimously in the Senate, and 409-2 in the House. Melania Trump championed it, and it is expected that President Trump will sign it. And yet, some of the cyber civil rights organizations that have led the fight to mitigate the harms of NCII over many years have serious reservations about the bill as passed. Why?Lawfare Contributing Editor Renée DiResta sits down with Mary Anne Franks, President and Legislative & Technology Policy Director at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, and Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at the George Washington Law School; Becca Branum, Deputy Director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology; and Adam Conner, Vice President, Technology Policy at the Center for American Progress to unpack what the bill does, why it suddenly cruised through on a rare bipartisan wave of support, and whether its sweeping takedown mandate will protect victims or chill lawful speech. This is a nuanced discussion; some of the guests support specific aspects of the bill, while disagreeing about the implementation of others. Expect clear explanations, constructive disagreement, and practical takeaways for understanding this important piece of legislation.More resources:TAKE IT DOWN Act Legislative Summary and TextBecca Branum and Tom Bowman's letter urging changes to TAKE IT DOWN prior to passageCyber Civil Rights InitiativeSenate press release upon House signing, including list of 120 supporting organizationsTo receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.

In a live conversation on May 2, Lawfare Editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes sat down with Lawfare Senior Editors Anna Bower, Scott Anderson, and Roger Parloff and Lawfare Legal Fellow James Pearce to discuss the status of the civil litigation against President Trump’s executive actions, including the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, the decision by a judge that the Alien Enemies Act invocation did not meet the invasion requirement in the law, litigation surrounding the dismantling of agencies across the executive branch, legal challenge to DOGE’s access to information at the Social Security Administration, and more.

From July 27, 2020: Anne Applebaum is a columnist, writer, historian and most recently, the author of "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lore of Authoritarianism," a book that explores why authoritarian ideologies are on the ascendance in countries as diverse as Poland, Hungary, Spain, the United States and Great Britain. Benjamin Wittes spoke with Anne about the themes of the book: Why are all of these authoritarian ideologies on the rise now? What is the role of social media in their rise? What are the major themes that they have in common, and how different are they location by location? How did conservative ideology come to fracture the way it has over so brief a period of time? And how is the modern wave of authoritarianism different from earlier iterations of it?To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.